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Andres torso glows with the Dieciocho gang-tattoos. He has a thirty-centimeter long scar on his stomach, deep enough to give you the impression there is still a bullet lodged there. He has been shot ten times in fights with Salvatrucha. - God wanted…

The minister of the interior in Guatemala has a press conference in Guatemala City about the police work dealing with the problems of the gangs in the country. A week before a female member of Salvatrucha had had her throat slit in the women…

In the countries of Central America where the gangs are the strongest, in Guatemala, El Salvador and the Honduras, the preventive work is nonexistent. Many turn to God in search for help.

The smoke from the marijuana is thick and the reggeaton music is loud in the prison Centro Preventivo in Guatemala City. In sector eleven, where there are only gang members, the guards never enter. We are alone with 180 members of Dieciocho. - We…

Sector eleven in the prison Centro Preventivo, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, is built for about sixty prisoners. There are now 180 members of the Barrio Dieciocho gang. Around ten guards with automatic guns are posted outside the prison, but…

Ximena lived on the street. She stole, took drugs and sold drugs. At thirteen she met a guy, a Salvatrucha. He became her husband and the gang was their security. A year ago he was killed by his own gang and the protection she had had disappeared. -…

Both Maras Salvatrucha and Dieciocho started in Los Angeles in the 1980:s and spread to the streets of Guatemala and Central America when the U.S. deported gang members. The name Salvatrucha, comes from the fugitives from the war in El Salvador that…

- We have a saying; vives por tu barrio, mueres por tu barrio, you live for your neighborhood and you die for your neighborhood. There is no one, no one, who is a member in a pandilla, a gang, whom has not killed. No one. He, who says differently, is…

Two Iraqi men watch an American Army patrol drive by a strech of small shops on the outskirts of Diwaniya, Iraq.

Iraqi Soldiers with the Interior Ministry stare at a passing American Army Humvee as the vehicle enters and Iraqi security complex. The level of violence in Iraq is so high that the only way for foreigners and soldiers to observe civilian life is…